Two Very Busy Days

Wednesday 8th October
After internet time to contact our families we headed into the city again. First stop mwas Tiananmen Square where we walked past Mao's Mausoleum. The queue to get in was very long so we continued on into the centre of the square where we could see the Monument to the People's Heroes, The Great Hall of the People (like Parliament House) and the Museum of China. There was also an Olympic Flower display with the mascots.
We went through the Meridien Gate into the Forbidden City and climbed up and viewed Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City from the balcony. Before continuing into The Forbidden City we had a picnic lunch. Our walk through the Forbidden City and saw many of the sights: the Imperial Gardens, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, The Palace of Heavenly Tranquility and more.

Wangfujing Street was a Western Style Shopping Mall and the students went off in small groups to explore. They bought their own dinner and most of them headed to KFC or McDonalds. The teahers braved the nearby food stalls and sampled vegetable pancakes, banana dumplings and candied fruit. We saw many Chinese delicacies including scorpion and octopus kebabs, egg balls filled with octopus and vegies, and lots of other things that we photographed. Before leaving here the children sampled the banana dumplings and also enjoyed candied fruit sticks.

On the way back to the bus we walked through the Donganmen Night Market where there were many more interesting foods on display - cow stomach, pineapple rice, fried dumplings and much more. Then a tired group headed back to Huijia.

Thursday 9th October
Today was a day that everyone was looking forward too - our walk on The Great Wall of China. It was a steep climb and the climbers were joined near the top by Mrs Lowe and Miss VanBeem who had caught the cable car up to the last level before the top.
It was quite cold up on the wall and the walk back was brisk to keep warm. Many of the students bought "I climbed The Great Wall" sweatshirts!

The Ming Tombs was our next stop and we were faced with more steps! This time it was a downwards climb into the Tombs and we learned some more Chinese history. Both our visits today showed us how long China's history is and how much their is to learn in a place that is so much older than Australia.

After dinner at a restaurant in Changping we gave our powerpoint presentations about our families, schools and Australia to some students in Years 5 and 6 at Huijia. Everyone's presentations were terrific!